Subtitle: Some Observations about Californians, from the Viewpoint of a Transplant.

Californians support individual freedom of choice. That is, they think that if people want to do something, they should be able to do it. The term chill seems to mean non-judgmental here. If you stand in your yard and sing, or paint your car paisley, or name your dog Shitface, it won’t bother them. In NYC, these behaviors would also be ignored, but denizens would be thinking, What an idiot. Here, no one thinks much about it at all. It’s just a person making a harmless choice.

They all seem to agree that everyone should have access to the ocean, everyone except oil drillers. The ban on drilling is specific, based on some oil spills that were expensive and destructive. Many, many other commercial activities are not only allowed, but welcomed. Californians like to have it all: a humming economy, seafood, beautiful surroundings, and abundant wildlife. They are prepared for natural disasters, but don’t seem to worry about them much until they happen.

Of course there are some behaviors Californians think aren’t harmless. Mostly they think people should know what they shouldn’t do. For example, if driving at the speed limit is dangerous due to weather, you should drive more slowly, and Californians are perfectly comfortable with police ticketing you for not figuring that out. They’re also comfortable with motorcycles driving between car lanes at highway speeds. Can that really be harmless? I’m not sure I have the formula yet.

Driving is one of the biggest differences between here and Massachusetts–though the elephant in the sky is the weather. My husband and I drove home from Mountain View last night for well over an hour in the rain, with heavy traffic. For part of the trip we were in the carpool lane, and it was definitely moving faster. Which is to say, I think people alone in their cars weren’t using that lane, even though the other lanes were much slower, and the cops were pretty busy with accidents. There were also clear shoulder lanes on either side of the highway. Drivers here almost never block intersections, and they wait patiently for signal lights on highway entrance ramps during rush hour.

Not that we don’t occasionally see bad driving here. On the way out yesterday we saw several California-licensed cars bypass a line waiting to enter a ramp, cutting over at the last minute. What do people think about when they do that? It should be, I’m such a jerk!

My California friends would probably tell me those cars were driven by transplants.